David Warren on Hobbes and Hobbits

David Warren has posted a rather thoughtful essay on legitimate government. An excerpt:

The idea of the autonomous “prince” is modern. The mediaeval idea of hierarchy precluded it. The man at the top was lynchpin for a regime consisting of persons in various ranks of nobility, but in a curiously invertible pyramid, for though each in his place is servant to a master above him, he is also servant to the servants of those below him in station, pledged to their defence. The idea of “public service” survives today, but with a much different flavour. This is because the individual has ceased to be defined as a soul, a “being,” with duties. He has been redefined as a cypher or “function” with “rights.” Where to the old Christian view, rights followed from duties in the same man, to our post-Christian view the arbitrary rights of one man translate to duties for unaccounted others. (My right to a free lunch translates to your duty to pay for it, &c.) In this sense, all modern political thinking is in its nature totalitarian.

Actually, we would avoid much mischief--and a large part of the culture wars, for that matter--if we adopted a "rights come from responsibilities, privilege from duties" approach to philosophy over the current philosophy of "rights" and "privileges." Marriage exists for the sake of creating families, and so married couple have a duty to each other and to their children first, not the other way around. A marriage which is known to be incapable of producing children from the onset is thus not a true marriage in the fullest sense of the word, regardless of the sexes and sexualities of the spouses. Contraception furthermore becomes an abandonment of the duty of marriage, and thus a violation of the "rights" of married couples, which is true even if the couple in question already has children.

And another:

The Hobbits of the Shire live under a system of Hardly Any Government. Almost everything is decided at the family level, which leaves, on the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, hardly anything else to decide. But it is better than this, owing to qualities in the Hobbits themselves. It appears that they have no understanding whatever of the concept of “fairness,” and no intellectual ability to distinguish redistribution of property from theft and rapine. They see things rather as they are. On the other hand, they have a perfect understanding of self-defence, engaged when they are occupied by liberal do-gooders. The solution to the problems these do-gooders create is thus very simple. Get rid of them. It is a task which everyone can join in. 

Saruman, his Orcs, and their contrivances, provide the metaphor to liberal do-gooders and their obsessions with “process” and technology. They proved their value in resisting evil, arguably, once upon a time, until they became evil themselves. They would not understand Christ’s mysterious instruction, “resist ye not evil,” nor the parables in which He shows that “fairness” is of the Devil. They arrive in power with a do-gooder agenda, and in this are typically modern men. They toggle between damnable efficiency, and damnable inefficiency. They care not which, for over time their project is to create such a cat’s cradle of inter-dependencies that all freedom of action expires, and they may feed on human souls unchallengeably. (Whenupon, God destroys them.)

This is a piercingly accurate description of both the "liberal do-gooders" and their victims.

Leave Mozilla a Comment

You can apparently leave feedback for Mozilla here. Let them know what you think of their products--or how they treated their co-founder and now-former CEO, Brendan Eich. I left them a short and not necessarily eloquent comment:

This isn't a comment about your products themselves. I like Firefox, and Thunderbird has been my main email client. However, I can't help but be appalled by how you treated your now-former CEO. The man was made to resign over a $1,000 contribution to Prop. 8, a proposition which not only won a majority vote in the state at the time, but was supported by a majority of people across the country (based on opinion polls and actual statewide votes as of the time). This was an action from 6 years ago and frankly has no effect on his ability to run an organization.

Ridiculous. How would all of those calling for his resignation have liked it if he, as company CEO, had simply fired them and replaced them with people whose views were more in line with his own? Shame on Mozilla for acting in such a childish manner and punishing a man for his privately held opinions. Perhaps those calling for his head should have simply resigned themselves instead, if the thought of working for someone with whom they disagreed on a political issue is such a problem for them. Good luck to them in finding a person whose political, ethical, and/or moral principles are 100% in line with their own to take over his position.

It looks like most of the reactions lately are pretty unhappy with their mistreatment of Mr. Eich. As well they should be: their forcing him to resign over a political opinion smacks of a secular inquisition. Since it has been done in the name of tolerance*, it is also outright hypocrisy, in the truest sense of the word. It is also worrisome that this kind of political persecution is not limited to just one issue (bad as that would be); rather, any dissent from the Left now leaves potential for punishment. The "gay rights" movement may be the worst offenders (rivaled really only by the pro-abortion movement), but they are by no means the only ones.

The movement which once claimed to be about equality and freedom is now identifiable with fascism.

I should end by adding that there is no word of where we can leave feedback for President Obama's (corrupt, frankly Orwellian) IRS for leaking this private information. I hope that Mr. Eich sues them and wins big, since political donations of this sort are in principle private and not public knowledge. It also suggests that we should be wary of what we report as donations to the IRS. A small tax break now may not be worth losing a job in a decade.


Update: While you're at it, why not leave Mozilla. Here are some alternatives which are similar to Firefox, using basically the same source code--though I think that SeaMonkey may still be by Mozilla, so not all of these are true alternatives. And here is a longer list of alternatives, courtesy of Wikipedia.


*I'm noticing that tolerance as a buzzword is even becoming a thing of the past on the Left. The idea has been dead for decades, but even the words is being used more by those of us who criticize them than by "progressives" and other Leftists themselves.

TMM: Cop-Killing Laws

It's kind of old(ish) news, but I'm only now hearing of it: Indiana passed a law to make it legal for citizens to shoot cops who enter their homes illegally:

Self-defense is a natural right; when laws are in place that protect incompetent police by removing one’s ability to protect one’s self, simply because the aggressor has a badge and a uniform, this is a human rights violation. Indiana is leading the way by recognizing this right and creating legislation to protect it.

Of course cops have already begun to fear monger the passage of this bill, “If I pull over a car and I walk up to it and the guy shoots me, he’s going to say, ‘Well, he was trying to illegally enter my property,’ ” said Joseph Hubbard, 40, president of Jeffersonville Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 100. “Somebody is going get away with killing a cop because of this law.”

Instead of looking at the beneficial aspect of this law, which creates the incentive for police to act responsibly and just, Hubbard takes the ‘higher than thou’ attitude and is simply worried about himself.

How about questioning the immoral laws that you are enforcing in the first place? Or how about sympathizing with the innocent people whose pets and family members have been slain, due to police negligence?

I think this kind of thing goes under the same general heading as the (long-since vetoed) Arizona bill which was meant to protect (or grant) religious liberties to those who wanted to opt out of participating in in "gay marriages." Namely, the intent of the law is probably good, but the fact that we even have to consider such laws is a sure sign that our nation (and civilization) is in decline. Actually, we need look no further than some of the comments in the article I linked about the cop-killing law.

In general, I am basically now in favor of this kind of law, for the simple reason that many police (individuals as well as entire departments) abuse their authority. The no-knock entry seems like a good idea, until it is used against petty criminals--or worse, innocent victims whose house is invaded by accident when the police get the wrong address.

A frequent complaint on gun-owners' rights sites (and forums, threads, etc) is that thanks to these no-knock entries and occasional wrong houses, the innocent home-owner now has to waist precious time ensuring that the people invading his home aren't police officers. This is time which might be costly in the event that the invader is a dangerous criminal [1]. Actually, since the police are increasingly likely to harm (or even kill) the occupants of the home regardless of whether or not they are guilty would suggest that they should be treated like average criminals whenever entering a home. A better law would almost certainly be to ban the no-knock entry (and no warrantless entries whatsoever), with automatic civil and criminal penalties against any officer who enters a house without permission or who harms any of the occupants therein.

But all of this goes back to my earlier point--made in the context of the Arizona bill--that we are increasingly living in a country in which rights must be spilled out in the law or they become nonexistent. Prudence is a dying virtue, whether among the citizens, the police, or the legislators and judges. It is a simple matter of common sense that people have a right to self-defense, in particular when they are at home. That is true whether the aggressor is hiding behind a badge or not.



----
[1] Speaking of which, the question might be raised as to which is more likely: the entrance of a dangerous criminal, or of the police. If the former, then time is being wasted in what is more likely than not a dangerous scenario. If the police are more likely to enter this way, then the law becomes even more obviously relevant, since this would tend to indicate that the polices' irresponsibly entering a home is an all-too-frequent occurrence.

Natural and Legal Rights

The Arizona religious rights law has been vetoed by Governor Brewer (R). I mentioned my own initial thoughts about its passage already, including some misgivings about the law itself. I might have considered vetoing it, even though I agree with the law's intent of protecting religious liberties, which are increasingly risking becoming an endangered species of freedom, but with the caveat that something a little more specific be passed.

I've mentioned having some misgiving about the law, and in retrospect I think I can articulate them somewhat now. I'm not particularly worried that gays will be turned away from truly necessary services: the hospital, the emergency room, the supermarket, etc. Indeed, I suspect that few businesses would turn them away, meaning that if they happen upon one which would, the end result is a minor inconvenience for them as they must drive across town to find the business' competitor and do business there instead.

Actually, my main beef with this law is not with the law itself--it could easily be tailored against the "broad...unintended consequences" which Governor Brewer cited as her concerns. Nor do I think that most (perhaps even, many) businesses would be likely to turn away gays, even if the business is owned by a Christian who is so orthodox as to retain a sense of sin. Even some of the businesses which actually have been sued have knowingly served gays in instances not involving "gay marriage/wedding" ceremonies, so it is probably a rare and limited set of conditions under which a gay person would likely be "turned away."

My misgivings are about something which underlies this law and any other which is meant to "protect" our religious freedoms and rights of conscience. Call it an attitude. I am of the opinion that the Tenth Amendment should be more broadly interpreted:  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

That which is not explicitly addressed by law is not a matter over which people ought to be prosecuted (or persecuted) under the law. The presumption should be that if there is not a law which explicitly require men to render their particular services to others, then the refusal of a service for any reason whatsoever is lawful. The particular application of this law is that unless the State of Arizona (or the US government) explicitly passes a law prohibiting that all businesses must render goods or service to gay people (or whomever), the presumption would be that a business refusing to render such goods or service is not to be held liable for failure to render the goods or services.

Unfortunately, the laws and the Courts have increasingly made the opposite presumption: namely, that which is not prohibited is compulsory. And we have by and large gone along with this interpretation, thereby necessitating various laws to protect particular exercises of conscience which were once taken for granted. We have given up freedom for "equality" and and order for "fraternity", but a false equality and a forced brotherhood (or comradeship).

We have bought into the lie that rights and freedoms come from the state, and only from the state. If a law doesn't explicitly guarantee a right, the presumption is increasingly that we do not have this right. There are two broad reason why freedom is slowly dying in the West:

1. It has been divorced from order. Ordered liberty is true freedom, and ultimately that order is rooted in morality (which has become something of a boo word with a large segment of society).
2. It has been viewed as a thing granted by the state rather than a thing which is limited where necessary by the state.

The second of these stems from the first. Part of the problem here is the presumption that the businesses only have this right if it is enshrined in law. Yes, the courts also make this presumption, probably making the laws necessary.

But this is why freedom is dying in the West: we take it for granted that laws give and take away freedom, rights, etc, rather than regulating it. Rather than a law stating that certain type of business (e.g. hospitals) cannot refuse service (because the right to life trumps whatever excuse may be offered), we assume that a law is needed to grant the right to refuse business.

Frankly, we ought to be able to refuse business to whom we please, conscience of otherwise. The Civil Rights Act did away with that. And, for what it is worth, I agree with the intended goal of the law (ending race-based discrimination, for example). However, I think that the racist business owner should ultimately be allowed to refuse service to blacks, even though I disagree that he should do so (and even though I know that the law right now says otherwise). If he did, I d not think he would remain in business for long.

Or, to hit this law a little closer: no one should be compelled to provide services wit which they disagree which do not  harm the society as a whole when withheld. Perhaps you are a florist who worships the demon Gaia [1], there is no reason why you should be compelled to provide flowers to a Christian wedding knowing that children will result from the union. And, in like manner, if you are a Christian who takes seriously the moral prescriptions and proscriptions of the Bible, there is no compelling reason why you should be forced to participate in or otherwise support a "marriage" between two gays. Will some gays (decreasingly) and some Christians (increasingly) be inconvenienced? Yes, but that is ultimately the price of freedom and pluralism.


[0] I don't really like the title, and it's not really a finished post, but I decided to publish (it is a blog, which rewards quantity over quality and timeliness over being well-thought-out).

[1] Forbidding marriage is a doctrine of demons, and Gaia worshipers would forbid "breeding" if they could...

Second Class Citizens

We hear many complaints of gays, of radical feminist womyn , and of any number of others perpetually and professionally offended classes about being "second class citizens." In reality, we are slowly tailoring the laws and their application so that faithful Christians (and in some cases observant Jews) will be the actual second-class citizens.

The laws are passed in the name of "equality," but they simply transfer which group will be made "unequal", removing some important freedoms along the way. I recently heard this excused under the guise of "freedom from discrimination." This is a risible claim: there will always be some form of discrimination in society. These laws entrench that discrimination, but aim it against certain disfavored worldviews (specifically, Christianity). while lifting it from certain ideologies which are antithetical to Christianity (gay liberationism, radical feminism, etc.). And this will be done for increasingly rare and minor cases, but then applied to increasingly broad cases. n the end, the gays and feminists and other "interested" ideologies will not find that they achieve equality--thought they may achieve protected special status for a time. Rather, they will become the cultural inquisitors (at least so long as they remain useful), and theirs ma be the east merciful inquisition of all.

Three Culture War Links: A Brave New World

Here are three quick links pertaining to the culture wars: I leave it as an exercise to the reader to see how they are related to each other.

First, on rights, responsibilities, and the idol of the idle.

Second, this post by Ross Douthat, which I am still working through myself. I do not agree entirely with Mr Douthat's assessment, by the way, but he raises a number of good points.

Third, this post about propaganda for the sexual revolution on Matt Walsh's blog (caution: some graphic content, NSFW). A key quote:

The results (of the social engineering in Huxley's Brave New World) were a society where people learned discipline and self-control. But tyrants do not want a citizenry with these kinds of characteristics. That’s one of the central themes in Huxley’s novel.

It’s terrifying to think of all the modern progressives who read this excerpt and nod their head in agreement with the Director. Huxley wrote Brave New World to be a nightmarish vision of a Dystopian future – they read it like a practical outline of their domestic agenda.

That’s why I chuckle whenever a radical progressive professes to have read and loved this book. It’s like they don’t realize that the entire thing is one long, stinging, merciless indictment against their ideology and worldview.

Such is where we are heading.

Quick Links and Quotes: Guns and Freedom

Some links, but one requires a password/invitation to view so I'll excerpt.

First, there's civil disobedience in Connecticut over gun registration. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide if this is a bad thing, because it weakens the government's ability to pass laws which help preserve an ordered freedom, or a good thing because this is a bad law which should be resisted.

Second, guns really do defend freedom (and not only lives and property):

"a widespread insurrection against the government wouldn’t take the form of a massed militia marching against the US military...Politicians would be easy targets, except for a few who could surround themselves with a ring of steel.  Roads and railroads would be blocked and destroyed.  Water and electrical systems would be constantly disrupted, as would the provision of everything from medicine to food.  Loyalist citizens would inform on their rebel neighbors, with the rebels in turn killing those suspected of informing.  Criminals would prey on everyone who was too weak to resist.

It would be dreadful, regardless of who won in the end. And in that terrible scenario, the personal firearms protected by the second amendment would be very effective.  A drone beats an AR-15 or a Glock, but the drone needs fuel, and an airfield, and an operator who likely has a home and a family.  Civil war is an awful thing, but the threat of a desperate populace resorting to it provides a check on the government."

Actually, that "Criminals would prey on everyone who was too weak to resist" is generally true. There is a saying that when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. We see it especially in high-crime areas: hello, Chicago and LA; hello, US border towns (and farms, etc) which get drawn into the Mexican Drug Cartels' ongoing wars; and hello, anarchy in New Orleans immediately after Katrina.

It's not that those of us who support Second Amendment rights live in a state of paranoia. Rather, we live in a state of preparation, not necessarily for revolution (wars are ugly things) but for the very real possibility of being victims of a mad gunman or a violent criminal or a drug enforcer; or, indeed, of the increasingly common infringement on our rights brought by the militarized police state (etc.).

The statists' desire to see us disarmed and helpless really is as much about the latter as it is the former. Make us helpless before any threat, and the citizenry will beg for more government to solve its problems. The fight over firearms also has this at its root, because if we give up our ability to self-defense (including potentially lethal self-defense), our only alternative for "safety" is to have a well-funded and well-oiled police-state, which then conveniently can be used to keep the citizens in line.

Sometimes the Courts Get It Right

This includes even some of the more Left-leaning courts. Hopefully this ruling stands. I especially hope this, since there is a large (and unfortunate) chance that I will have to live in California at some point.

On the other hand, there are always loopholes, which I expect to be found in states like California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, etc.

Of Safety and Satire

Probably the most entertaining satirical video you'll see today: a citizen vs the nanny-state (city council edition). Ass-shland city council is considering an ordinance against open-carry of firearms (which is legal in Oregon). One citizens steps up in an epic way:


I've had my fill of government bureaucrats and other busybodies who are interested in enacting pointless and ineffectual laws against such things as our right to bear arms (openly or concealed), thereby punishing the majority of citizens who are at least somewhat responsible, sane, level-headed, etc. while making us all easier targets for those who are not sane, level-headed, or who are just plain sociopathic. But guns represent freedom and responsibility (even if they would be ineffectual in, for example, an actual rebellion), things that Leftists and other Statists don't want to encourage.

On Boredom Killings

The Ace of Spades blog pretty much summarizes my thoughts on the recent shooting of an Australian man by three teens:

• The murderers were black, the victim white, and therefore the media will ignore race entirely. You'll hear no condemnations from hucksters like Al Sharpton. It only matters if it's a white guy (or white Hispanic guy) killing a black guy, never the other way around.
• The killing may or may not have been motivated by racism--just as in any case where a white man kills a black man, the murder may or may not have anything to do with racism. However, there has bee a spate of race-related black-on-white crimes.
• Piers Morgan, may he be deported someday as a foreign threat, has essentially called for a gun ban following this. At least, stricter gun laws, and an uprising against the NRA (who are really behind this, doncha know). As the blogger Andy says, the right response to this is, "Piss off, Piers. The perps were 15, 16 and 17, hence underage under existing US gun laws."
• Finally, what does it say about the culture that a group of teens would come to the conclusion that killing somebody is a legitimate form of entertainment when bored?

This frankly has nothing to do with gun control, but it might have something to do with racism. Therefore, the people who need to be "stood up to" are not the NRA, but rather Obama, Holder, Al $harpton,, and the rest of the race-baiters.

Quick Links: Guns and Crime and Cops

Some of these links come from the Ace of Spades blog's post linked below. In no particular order. First, Maetenloch has a takedown-summary of the Ms. Magazine propaganda-piece against guns. Frankly, the woman who did this is guilty of a few crimes of negligence already (most states make it a crime to leave an unattended and unlocked firearm where it can be accessed by children, as this woman repeatedly did), though she'll probably never face any real consequences from this. Not much of a fisking or takedown, but this line pretty much encapsulates the right attitude towards propaganda pieces like the Ms. article: "And of course she found the gun dangerous - mostly because she refused to learn anything about the weapon and also because she did willfully dumb and dangerous things like this."

While we're on the topic, it turns out that at the same time that the NYPD refuses to allow civilians (whatever happened to responsible citizens?) to carry weapons in general and guns in particular, they also refuse to protect those same civilians when said civilians are under attack from somebody who is breaking the law and carrying a weapon. To be fair, the crime rate has fallen a bit in New York (as compared to other cities like Chicago with equally draconian no-guns policies), but still: there were two cops on-site during this attack who locked themselves in a car nearby and just watched. Apparently, they were afraid that the attacker had a gun and not just a knife (which make me feel a whole lot better about NYPD), thereby allowing a knifeman (who had been n a spree of sorts) to stab an innocent civilian who himself had nothing but his bare hands and his wits to protect himself. And the victim in question is now told that he cannot sue the police for failing to intervene, that the police had no duty to intervene here.

Speaking of utterly worthless police, in Detroit the police will rob you. I guess they've decided that if you can't beat 'em then you can join 'em, but when the cops are crooks and criminals and the civilians aren't allowed anything with which to defend themselves, we get a police state without any actual security. I guess that Benjamin Franklin was right. Perhaps this is why Detroit is one of the most violent cities in the country (beat out only by another town in Michigan).

What Stand Your Ground Laws Aren't

Via the Ace of Spades blog:

In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, many media outlets have erroneously focused on Florida's Stand Your Ground law, which was never invoked by the defense. In fact, Zimmerman declined the opportunity to seek a Stand Your Ground hearing earlier this year....
This discussion of Stand Your Ground has allowed to the media to revive the story of Marissa Alexander, a black woman from Jacksonville, Florida who "only fired a warning shot trying to protect herself from an abusive husband" and who unsuccessfully tried to invoke the law in her defense....
Alexander claims she felt her life was at risk, but she left the house and went into the garage, retrieved a handgun from her car and returned to the kitchen where her husband (Rico Gray) and his two children were located. Stand Your Ground does not require that you attempt to flee, but she already had. At this point, it no longer applied. She then fired the "mere warning shot", which in many accounts was aimed at the ceiling, but the court documents indicate "barely missed Gray's head".

Note the difference: Alexander had already fled the scene and then returned, whereas Zimmerman had simply followed Martin around (again, this was stupid of him), and only pulled a gun and shot Martin when he had already been attacked. At this point, flight was entirely out of the question.

Bonus for pointing out the ridiculousness of Florida's sentencing laws, which apparently required a minimum sentence (10-20 years) for Alexander since she fired the gun (aggravated assault), but which would have not required this sentence if the bullet had actually hit and killed somebody (manslaughter).

Stand Your Ground

Whatever else one may think of the Zimmerman-Martin trials, it's worth noting two things that they really were not about:

1. Race
2. Stand your ground laws.

Martin happened to be black, and Zimmerman happened to be white (Hispanic), but this was tangential at best to this case. The folks like Je$$e Jack$on and Al $harpton (and for that matter, Barack Obama and Eric Holder) do the nation no favors by attempting to make it about race. I'm thinking that Zimmerman probably would have shot Martin had he been white or Hispanic or Asian rather than black. And, as it turns out, about a year before this whole incident Zimmerman himself had testified before against the the local police in defense of a homeless black man. So race really doesn't come into play here.

Second, there's the "Stand Your Ground" laws, which are in the media's crosshairs. However, that law was never mentioned in the trial, neither by defense nor prosecution (and believe me, the prosecution tried everything and anything it could think of, including the ridiculous--this is the one place where race actually did come into play during the trial). The Stand Your Ground laws are actually quite reasonable: they basically mean that a person who is attacked in a public (or private) place does not need to retreat before pulling a gun in self-defense.

Some states have the opposite kind of law; a sort of "you must attempt to retreat first" law, which in some cases has applied even to private property. This means that the law effectively states that during a home invasion, a person is required to attempt to gather himself and his family into the farthest reach of the house before he can legally pull a gun and start shooting. That seems to me to be a bit of overkill in the opposite direction, and it gives an immediate tactical advantage to any criminal who attempts a home invasion.

The same is true in public spaces. In any good defensive carry class, the instructors will teach you to look for a way to avoid conflict (including by fleeing) before pulling a gun in defense; that's pretty much a given. But there is a world of difference between saying that a person must make some attempt to flee before defending himself, and saying that flight is the best first option. Zimmerman may have acted foolishly in following Martin around, and he is paying for that folly in ways that most of us cannot imagine. He got lucky with the innocent verdict, and I think that this ultimately was the right verdict, but he will still have that hanging on his conscience: did he do everything he could to avoid the situation? And he will never be able to go back to life as he knew it again: there are plenty of people who (thanks to the race-baiting mentioned above) will no doubt be looking for ways to "get" him and those whom he loves. He'll have to watch his back as a result.

However, Zimmerman's foolishness cannot be fairly blamed on the Stand Your Ground laws (he claims to have not been aware of those laws at the time, though this seems a little odd and suggests the need for some improvement in the CCW instructions/licensing for Florida). At the point in which the encounter turned violent, there wasn't much opportunity for Zimmerman to flee anyway, and certainly not at the point when he shot Martin--at least not according to the evidence we have available.

The media does nobody any favors by politicizing this court case, or otherwise attempting to manufacture "facts" in pursuit of their own agenda. Overturning laws which are on the books for very valid reasons will not bring back Martin, and it furthermore won't help anybody to sleep safer at night.

The Tyranny of Obama's Administration

It beggars belief that there are people so gullible as to think that the HHS contraceptive mandate is about anything save crushing the consciences of pro-lifers in general and Catholic in particular. To whit: while the administration has determined that it cannot enforce the employer mandate in general until after the midterm elections, they have also decided that the HHS mandate will still go into effect and be enforceable starting on August 1 of this year. So it continue to be more important to the administration that employers be forced to provide contraception, sterilization, and some types of abortion than that employers be forced to provide health insurance.

It's both telling and chilling: "Conservatives have been celebrating the delay in implementation of the employer mandate in Obamacare since news broke, but that good news has no impact on the controversial birth control mandate." That there are people who would still defend this as a part of the healthcare package suggests that our country is becoming as morally and intellectually bankrupt as the Leftists we elected, growing tired of the responsibilities freedom and weary of the burden of liberty.